


and let your heart beat over my heart

by Anonymous



Category: Captain America (Movies) RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Caretaking, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Hair Washing, Love, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Non-Sexual Intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 15:13:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6990649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian takes care of everyone. When that weight piles on and makes to crush him, though: Chris is there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and let your heart beat over my heart

**Author's Note:**

> There was a point, some time ago, where [luninosity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity) asked for Chris taking care of a hurt Sebastian. I had asked whether she meant physical hurt or emotional hurt. She responded, eventually, that she'd be aiming for emotional hurt. I, however, had already written physical hurt. This means now there are both. Here is the emotional one, indebted as it stands to [this](http://www.bartleby.com/146/15.html).

At the very least, Chris thinks to himself, if it has to happen at all, if there’s no sparing Sebastian's gentle, open, impossible heart from the weight of it: at least now Chris recognizes it.

At least now, Chris knows that it’s there.

And by every god in any heaven: he will pray gratitude until the day he dies for the privilege of knowing, of finally earning the right to _learn_ , how to make it better.

He’s already prepared the nest of pillows, blankets. All of it softly imbued with the lavender oil that makes Sebastian go boneless and breathe in deep, that chest heaving shakily just once before lungs ease and the puffs of air that escape those decadent lips is petal-soft and golden. 

He’s got water, and tea, and wine. Beer and over-sugared coffee. Fresh fruit. Bars of chocolate. Still-warm bread from the bakery on the next street over, and cheddar flavored snacks of various shapes and sizes but all of which leave unnaturally-neon stains on the fingertips that Chris will luxuriate in licking off just as much as Sebastian will relish the sensation, the ritual attention and care. He hears the soft slosh of water, the crystalline chime of motion in the bath and while his chest is tight for the fact that any of this is necessary, his heart is warm for having _something_ to do. Some way to make it fade, make it less of a noose, even if he can’t ever unmake the rope, won’t ever be able to make it go away.

His heart is warm though, because Sebastian is his. And the love he feels for that man is beyond anything Chris has ever even conceived of, dreamed up, jotted down as a celluloid fantasy: Sebastian is _his_ , and if he cannot slay the monsters then at least he knows, now, how to fend them off and keep Sebastian safe until the move on to easier prey.

Chris eases the bathroom door open, but the hinges creak, and Sebastian turns his head where it’s tossed over the side, throat bared to the ceiling. Opens those impossible wide eyes, vulnerable and trusting, and Chris’s pulse trips for it, even after all this time. 

“Ready?” Chris asks, and Sebastian hums, closing his eyes and rolling his head back again, neck stretched long. 

The bath itself is perfumed, peppermint milks that make Sebastian’s skin soft, luminescent in the pale light of candles and moonbeams through the windowpanes. Chris runs hands over those bare shoulders, lavishes love and care that Sebastian meets with a delightful kind of shiver: he’s been soaking for near-on an hour, but he’s still a little too tense. Chris catches his pulse at the side of his neck.

Still just a little too taut-strung.

The sound Sebastian makes just before Chris’s hands run through his damp hair curls around Chris’s ribs, each individual one until it flutters, brands, sears against his heart for proximity as it winds and lives in his chest like the world ending and beginning and being just like this, just them. It has become a common sensation, with Sebastian. Chris thinks he couldn’t ask any idea he’s ever had of God for something sweeter than that feeling, and everything it points toward.

Everything it means. Everything it is.

“Take a deep breath in for me, baby,” Chris exhales at Sebastian’s ear, and then does the same as Sebastian’s chest disturbs the still of the water in filling, rising strong and stretching up. Chris breathes Sebastian in, the deep musk and salt of him under everything else. The pump of his heart is lulling, lazier now. Beautiful at the swell of Chris’s cheek against Sebastian’s neck, as he cards fingers against Sebastian’s scalp in time with every steady beat.

“Ready,” Sebastian sighs, and Chris drops a kiss atop his head before he reaches for the rosemary and mint shampoo, complementing the miasma of earth and softness that envelopes the room, their bodies, as Chris starts to work the lather to Sebastian’s tiny sounds of contentment, little keens of pleasure that make Chris feel like he’s found his place in the world finally, never to be lost or forgotten or taken away.

And once the suds sustain themselves, Chris massages the skin and works deep against the roots of that soft, uncropped hair with just his left hand while he snakes the right around Sebastian’s chest and plays a little with his nipples on the way around, yeah, but that’s not the point. The point is an open palm on glowing skin and the subtle press of weight against every breath, making it real. Pressing them fully into the here and the now.

Because for every panic attack and wide gaze made to cover racing heart, for every tight smile that never reaches his eyes that Sebastian sees and takes him aside to temper, every every time that Sebastian saves him and everyone else around him from whatever looming spectre threatens to tear them apart, every single fucking day and every moment Chris can’t breathe through, fears he won’t last through, fears he’ll lose Sebastian for the weight and trial of, for the weight and trial of _him_ , sometimes, when it’s at its worse so the doubt seeps _that_ deep: Sebastian holds them all together, and it’s only once that’s seen to its end that he, himself, allows to the cracking in his foundations to wear down and split free.

‘Cause even the most god-given, life- _giving_ of souls in this world will bend under that kind of duress for too long, for bearing up the weak spots in everyone else and tucking his own aside: it will bend, and Chris’s job is to be certain it never breaks. Because above all sacred duties he could ever have held in ungainly, unworthy hands, it is the keeping of Sebastian’s fucking beautiful soul.

“Rinse?” Chris asks. He's answered by a the thud of Sebastian's heart under his hand and Sebastian's fingers stroking his knuckles. Chris relishes the way that innocent contact sets his world to rights before he turns on the tap, lets the water grow warm before cupping it delicately in his hands and whisking the lather away to reveal Sebastian's dark locks once more. 

Sebastian lifts himself from the tub, then, into Chris's waiting arms, into the fluffy towel he holds out to wrap him in, to hold him in for a few long moments before Chris goes about drying him properly, every limb a treasure, the scrubbing dry of his hair a task of concerted intimacy if anything in the world could touch such a task. 

And hell if Chris doesn't light up, doesn't melt himself into the way Sebastian's falls against him, all trust and need. Chris wraps him spine to sternum in the towel and holds him close, so very close for just a few quiet moments, where all that exists are breaths and heartbeats above the soft sound of draining water and fizzling bubbles. 

“Bed," Sebastian says, voice soft and far and light. Chris guides him toward the waiting warmth, the comfort of a nest built from sheer, unadulterated love. 

Which Sebastian falls into, shaping the cushions to his body as he reaches out, make hands at Chris to follow like it’s a question, like it was ever a question. Chris strips from his jeans with one hand, so as not to break contact with Sebastian’s fingers twined in his own, and then aims to fall at Sebastian’s side, cradling, though Sebastian pulls him at just the right angle, at just the right moment, in order to pull Chris straight on top of him, weight without tempering pressing Sebastian into the bed.

“Sorry,” Chris says immediately, making to ease the heft of his frame, but Sebastian has strength in his hands where the rest of him is sinking into perfect ease. He holds Chris steady, chest to chest.

Heart to heart.

“Don’t,” Sebastian says, against the apology. “Stay,” Sebastian says, for everything else.

So Chris does, and Sebastian’s chest rises into Chris’s own over and again without even seeming to notice the extra weight it has to lift, as if it almost wants air more, and takes it greedily, for the fact of Chris against it. But then Chris notices, as he always does. Not that he forget, but that his body begs to remember it anew every time, to soak it in and wonder with it, but then: Chris notices.

He’s not straight on top of Sebastian. His body is lined up just to the side.

To Sebastian's left.

“Beloved, let your eyes half close,” Sebastian breathes, like the words really are pressed out with the beat of the heart cupped close against Chris’s heart, the press not a battle but an embrace, a caress, and Sebastian needs this to let go, Chris has learned, but Chris has also learned that it sings in his own heart in a way that puts him just as right with the universe in kind.

And that, at its core, _is_ Sebastian: at the moment of his greatest need, his vulnerability offered and trusted to be held holy and safe, he’s still giving. He is still beyond the confines of everything even Chris had learned to hope for from the world.

And that’s all the do, all that they are. Bare skin and beating hearts and the sound a soul makes when it knits together with strands borrowed from another of its kin, when they breathe and their chests meets and their hearts reach and then exhale, their lips so close. That’s all they do.

All they do, in point of fact, means everything.

And Sebastian smiles, as his eyes drift closed.

Though Chris: he lets his heart beat over that precious chest just a little bit longer, before his own eyes flutter shut.


End file.
